Social-technical trends have resulted in a proliferation of over-the-top (OTT) applications and services such as Facebook Places, Google Latitude and Shop Kick. These proximity-based applications and services are based upon an awareness that two or more user equipment (or users) are in close proximity to one another. These applications and services typically rely upon “high-level software,” employ global positioning system (GPS) technologies and networks for determining the position of each user equipment (UE) while accessing a wireless local area network (WLAN), an evolved universal telecommunications radio access network or a legacy radio access network which supply the “data pipes” for the application or service. In such a high-level software scheme, there is no network supervision of these applications and services. As such, OTT applications and services represent unregulated network traffic which utilize bandwidth, and pose security risks while offering no economic advantage from the mobile network operator's perspective.
Device-to-device (D2D) communications are contemplated as an underlay of an advanced cellular network, such as the long term evolution-advanced (LTE-A) and LTE-beyond (LTE-B) networks, as specified in the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). In D2D communications, two or more user equipment (in close proximity) may communicate directly instead of through an evolved Node B (eNB) and evolved packet core network to offload network traffic, such as video streaming, online gaming, media downloading, and peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing. Unlike competing technologies like Bluetooth and WiFi, D2D communication promises to provide network operators the ability to coordinate communications in licensed and unlicensed spectrum in each cell to avoid interference among devices. However, an LTE platform does not currently include functionality which would allow network supervision of over the air device discovery to intercept the above described growing demand for proximity-based packet switched applications and services.
There is a need for network-based identifying, evaluating and controlling of potential opportunities for device to device communication among two or more proximately located user equipment coupled to an E-UTRAN system and security architecture. Such network-based control would allow UE access to proximity-based packet switched applications and services while at the same time allowing cellular network operators the ability to retain control of each UE's behavior; for example, which UE can emit discovery signals, when and where, what information each UE carries and what the UEs should do once they discover each other.
The following abbreviations that may be found in the specification and/or the drawing figures are defined as follows:    3GPP 3rd Generation Partnership Project    BS base station    D2D device-to-device    DDN downlink data notification    ECGI E-UTRAN cell global identifier    ECM EPS connection management    EPS evolved packet system    eNB evolved Node B    E-UTRAN evolved universal terrestrial radio access network    ID identification    IP Internet protocol    LTE-A Long Term Evolved-Advanced    LTE-B Long Term Evolved-Beyond    M2M machine-to-machine    ME mobile equipment    MME mobility management entity    MTC machine type communication    NAS non-access stratum    P-GW packet data network gateway    RAN radio access network    RRC radio resource control    SA service aspects    S-GW serving gateway    TA tracking area    TAU tracking area update    UE user equipment